NRA Slams Media "Trick" Of Using The Word "Shooting" To Describe Mass Shootings

Although the National Rifle Association is refusing to comment on the recent mass murder in Isla Vista, California, the group has released a video complaining the media "race[s] to label anything with a gun as a shooting."

On May 23 a young man apparently motivated by hatred of women went on a killing spree where he stabbed three victims to death before shooting 11 people; three fatally. In the ten days since the killing spree, the NRA has declined to issue a comment, a common tactic of the gun group.

Without mentioning the Isla Vista killings by name, on May 30 the NRA published a video commentary called "Propaganda," in which "NRA News Commentator Dom Raso exposes the inaccuracy of the media - especially regarding their reports of mass shootings."

During a critique of the media, Raso warned viewers of a "trick" where media figures "race to label anything with a gun as a shooting, because they know how much more attention they are going to get with that word." According to Raso, the media use the word "shooting" so that viewers are being "subconsciously told to think about the tool they used" instead of the perpetrator.

RASO: Here's another trick of theirs, when someone commits a murder, it used to be a murder right? But now they race to label anything with a gun as a shooting, because they know how much more attention they are going to get with that word. So the average person who doesn't stop to think about what he's watching falls for the story line. Think about the difference between a shooting and a murder. In one you have a shooter and the other one a murderer. All of a sudden instead of focusing on the real common link between all acts of evil, the evil person who did it, we are subconsciously told to think about the tool they used instead. Evil is the problem; the tool is irrelevant and stories designed to make you think anything other than the truth are propaganda.

Firearms are used in 69.3 percent of murders. Of 37 public mass killings between 2006 and 2013, 33 involved firearms, while the Boston Marathon bombings, an incident involving a car, and two cases of arson accounted for the other four incidents.

The NRA has a longstanding and conspiratorial obsession with the media. During a speech at the NRA's 2014 annual meeting, the group's executive vice president Wayne LaPierre mentioned the media 13 times in a 21 minute speech and claimed "one of America's greatest threats is a national news media that fails to provide a level playing field in this country for the truth," and later told the crowd "we are not about to stand idly by as the dishonest political and media elites strip our values away."

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Timothy Johnson is a guns and public safety researcher at Media Matters, having previously spent time at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence Legal Action Project and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. He is a graduate of The George Washington University.